MKC82FA023 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Wichita, KS to Dodge City, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC82FA023
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N1589E
- Operator
- Gary Lee Houser
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wichita, KSTo Dodge City, KS
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › Lack of total instrument time
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT RECEIVED A WX BRIEFING FOR A FLT TO DODGE CITY,KS. THE FSS SPECIALIST ASKED THE PLT IF HE WAS PROPOSING HIS FLIGHT UNDER IFR SINCE HIS DESTINATION WAS REPORTING IMC. THE PLT REPLIED THAT HE WAS. A GROUND WITNESS AT HAVILAND,KS LOCATED ABOUT 5 MILES EAST OF THE ACCIDENT SITE OBSERVED AN AIRPLANE FLYING WESTWARD PARALLELING U.S. HWY 54 & A SINGLE-RAILROAD TRACK. THE WITNESS STATED THAT THE ACFT WAS FLYING AT AN ALTITUDE BELOW THE TOP OF A 319FT WATERTOWER. THE PLT'S WIFE STATED HE WAS CAPABLE OF FLYING THE ACFT UNDER INSTRUMENT WX CONDITIONS & HAD DEMONSTRATED HIS ABILITY TO DO SO ON TWO OCCASIONS BY CLIMBING & DESCENDING THROUGH CLOUDS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC82FA023
- Event ID
- 20020917X02468
- Case number
- MKC82FA023
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bdf6d0401d0b0f51e05631e255a3a3519c4dae3f3771ba13de984dcaaaa785e4; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:38:13.873Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The narrative states "THE PLT RECEIVED A WX BRIEFING FOR A FLT TO DODGE CITY,KS" and that "HIS DESTINATION WAS REPORTING IMC"; the record showed the crash location, Greensburg, KS, as the destination.